


Wind and Dust

by medmech



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-06 09:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10331123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medmech/pseuds/medmech
Summary: Years later, when she could finally find it in herself to write it all she would start with the words that had caught her attention in a time where every sight was blurry and every word was only an echo:"History will only ever remember stories of misery and pain"The words the same girl would utter later in time regards to that sentence would however always feel too private and too beautiful for others to know:"I could live through all the pain and misery this world has to offer if they told me I would see that light in your eyes at the end of the road. History doesn't even have to remember"The world travel AU.





	1. Chapter 1

She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her breathing. She had to slow it down first, her heart rate would only start to come down after that. She knew she was on the edge of a panic attack, as that realisation crept up on her she forgot to count down from ten, she forgot about slowing down her breathing, the low light of the lamp on her bed side started to seem brighter and brighter and at one point it wasn't the light of the silent room she was seeing, it was a brighter light; one that was moving - no, it was several, several bright light sources were on the move. There were voices too, she couldn't decipher them at first, they all came to her at once. She wasn't at a small dorm room anymore, she was somewhere else completely; some place she visited every night.

Her eyes were closed, but she could see light. Bright lights. Coming and going. She couldn't quiet remember where she was yet, but she knew she had to open her eyes. She knew something had happened. For a while she couldn't understand it, the moment she did was the moment that her eye lids no more shielded her from the horrors that would haunt her for years to come. She looked to her left, where there had been hundreds a few minutes ago was left with no man standing. She could see the man in dark blue uniforms trying to reach each other. She could hear the ambulances coming and going. But all these things she would realise only later, later when she would look back at that moment. In that second all she could see was blood seeping from dark curly hairs over small freckles and further down until it met a piece of metal engraved into a shoulder. 

Clarke knew what more she would see would be worse, maybe that was why for several moments she remained frozen looking at the blood that was coming from Bellamy's skull. She knew she had to prepare herself, as she tried to move a little and looked to the left; she knew. She knew nothing would ever be the same. The left side of the taxi was half burnt and half shattered. The boy sitting on the left side, a boy Clarke once loved, had his head on the back of the drivers seat. His long and shaggy hair was soaked, covering the side of his face and although Clarke's vision was blurry and she felt as if she could lose consciousness any minute she knew it wasn't good.

The blonde girl was about to pass out when she heard a voice coming from the front seat. As she listened to it, she realised the voice had been repeating their names ever since the moment Clarke woke up, she forced herself to answer, but only a strangled sentence came out:

\- I'm here Rae.

There was a sudden rise in the other girls voice and Clarke knew a bit of relief was there too – it would be short lived.

\- Clarke, I can't move. You've got to. Get out, get help. Please get help. I can't even move my neck and Finn and Bell, they haven't - Clarke please. Please help them. Help him.

And as Raven said those words, Clarke used all the energy she had to open the door and get out. She ignored the pain and tried to shout. She couldn't. Noone could hear it, even if she did. 

Every person Clarke could see was trying to get help, every person around her was as scared and in the same urgency, they all needed help as badly as her friends did. Ambulances were coming and going. There were cabs too, they were carrying those in a better shape. An ambulance was getting close to her, a faceless man got off the back and the moment he did Clarke pointed him to the half decomposed cab begging him to help. As the blonde watched the medical personnel go the cab, Clarke knew she was about to pass out. She used all the energy she had left to pull out her phone from her front pocket, some how through the broken glass Clarke managed to make a call. Before Octavia could utter a word Clarke started talking, she was only able to get out a single word before she collapsed and lost her consciousness once again:

-Bomb.

As the memory came to an end Clarke's breathing finally slowed down and she was back in her cold hotel room a thousand kilometers west to the place where her life changed forever, in a continent other than which she had spent her whole life and became the person she is, in the same continent where her life had changed forever. It had been a while now. 

95 days since the exact day she had met the real cruelty of the world.  
93 since she buried Finn.  
91 since Bellamy woke up.  
87 since it became clear Raven's nerve damage would never completely heal.  
71 since Bellamy was discharged.  
65 since Raven said they shouldn't see each other for a while.  
58 since Bellamy agreed.  
56 since Octavia said she had to take care of his brother first.  
53 since she learned Raven went back to school.  
49 since Finn's mom came to The States to collect his things.  
45 since she finally agreed to see a psychiatrist.  
21 since she decided she wanted to drop out.  
20 since she visited her dad's grave and told him.  
19 since her mom said she wouldn't forgive her for the self destruction.  
13 since she dropped out.  
7 since she bought a ticket.  
3 since she started a journey with no destination.

It had been Finn who had taught Clarke the beauty of a journey. It was him that showed Clarke that the best way to find one's self was to lose yourself first. And Clarke would forever be thankful for that, for during the journey she would find it in herself to heal and on the road she would find her home.


	2. Chapter 2

The sheets were soaked when she woke up. There was nothing else she would like more than for it to have only been caused by the heat, but it wasn’t that. It was only march, and you could sweat if you were running at the middle of the day; you could sweat if you were in a tightly packed gym with a weight on your hand. But the weight was on Clarke’s shoulders, the sweat from a nightmare which was also a memory. The first light of the day was soon to come, the sky was turning from a dark shade of blue to a slightly warmer one; the clouds would soon be distinguishable. 

She tied up her hair and found a tshirt on the floor without turning the lights on. It wouldn’t be too kind to open the lights in a dorm of 8 at the wee hours of the day, she knew. With the shirt she wore the day before and tights she wore the night that wasn’t yet over she left the hostel. She walked at first, slowly but surely; as if she knew where she was headed. She didn’t. The steps she took got faster by the minute and the sky had become a light shade of blue by the time she reached the ocean. And she started running then. There were few cars passing by, most of them were travelling to the opposite direction; into the city. She hadn’t ever been the most athletic person, her steps weren’t even; her speed not smart; her style not graceful. She slowed down at moments, ran for her life the next. And for a while she kept going, she couldn’t tell you how long it took for she wore no watch and carried no phone. She stopped when she reached a clearly historic monument of a ship and men. She knew it was important. She couldn’t remember why. She kept going for a little longer untill she reached something she could name, the Tower of Belem. 

This had been ranked number one in the shitty brochures of What To Do in Lisbon she picked up at the hostel the night before. It was nice she tought to herself, Finn would have had a lot more to sat about it tho. He would talk about how wonderous it must have been at the times the tower was built, what an adventure it would have been to sail away with Christopher Columbus and all the other unnamed and unfaced sailors that she saw on a monument moments ago. He would make up stories of discovery and war, of brotherhood and of love without a moments notice. And then Bellamy would cut him off, he would say the tower had been built between 1514 and 1520 as part of the Tagus estuary defence system under the reign of Manuel first. Raven would be thinking about the mechanics of it, without any knowledge of civil engineering she would perfectly determine the pressure points and the weight centers. And then Octavia would point at the Belem Patissery where Portugal’s world famous Pastel de Nate had been invented saying she was starving. They would walk to the patissery where even this early at the day a cue had started to form while Bellamy talked about the story of the nuns who invented the dessert and I smiled softly, knowing how lucky I were to have them but pretending to whine about something or the other instead. 

Yet they weren’t there and this scene would never come to be. With that knowledge Clarke started her walk back toward the hostel. The scene would never come to be, they would never have a picture laughing in front of the Belem Tower like they had in front of the Statue of Liberty, they would never take a picture on the 25th of April Bridge like they did on Brooklyn Bridge. The thought burnt through her body like a fire, like the same flames that consumed her every night in her dreams. As she kept going, a thought started to form in her head. The sun had reached the mid of the sky when she reached her empty dorm room.

It only took a minute for her to find her purse and sketch book, she stuffed it all in her bag and took a moment to look at her phone. The airplane icon had been present at the upper left of the screen for three days now and she had no intention nor hope of reconnecting with anyone, so without a second thought she put it back to her backpack and left before she could convince herself to take it.

She rode the bus to the bridge with a cup coffee in her hand a sandwich in her bag. As she found a spot close to the foot of the bridge and settled down on the grass the tought that had formed in her head earlier had already become a picture. So she took her sketch book and her hand moved through the page with barely ever stopping, the sun slowly started to go down; cars passed, tourists walked by, birds kept flying up and down but the pencil kept moving. When the sun finally went far enough that there wasn’t enough light to keep sketching, Clarke started to walk back. 

The sun was down by the time Clarke reached the Liberty Avenue but the hundred year old buildings the colour of her hair were alight with street lights and the white marble statue at the middle of the Avenue seemed as if it were made to contrast the black sky, and although Clarke was tired and hungry she couldn’t help herself. She took out her sketchbook but remembered that those pages had a purpose. Remembered that they weren’t for spectacular views but instead for monuments to moments that would never be. She couldn’t draw this there, so she took out the only other piece of paper she had; the to-go coffee cup of Starbucks. And soon the once meaningless coffee cup was covered with yellow buildings with white and black details, with an arc as a door and a marble statue at the middle giving the drawing a depth that photographs often lacked. 

Clarke didn’t hear him at first, too focused on the now finished drawing of the avenue. 

-“I’ll give you 20 for the cup” said the middle aged man. She looked up, her blue eyes clear with surprise,

-20 euros?

-Aye

Clarke was 20 euros richer by the time she reached the hostels kitched. She boiled some of the comlimentary pasta and ate silently sitting next four girls who talked too loud in a language she didn’t know. She didn’t catch much of the conversation though for she had figured out how she wouldn’t have to go crawling back home, for 20 euros would afford her a night at a dorm room and a few chocolate bars at a market and she didn’t really want much else. 

So she went to bed that night with an idea and a mission. Finn had wanted to travel the world, Clarke would make sure he did and she would drink a lot of coffee on the way. Yet the nightmares still came at night and after a quick shower, Clarke had arrived at the foot of the bridge with her sketch book in hand and the sun barely born.


	3. Chapter 3

It was five days later, 67 euros richer and with three completed sketches that Clarke left the city with 7 hills for a town that was 45 minutes away. On the train ride she kept thinking about the irony, how was it that when she had lost sight of her future and her life had fallen apart with another city that was said to be of 7 hills that she found a way back to hold on in another city of the same name. The answer, she didn’t know for not in fate nor in any lord she had any faith. In the last hundred days she had thought about it a thousand times and came to the same conclusion again and again. She didn’t know if there was anyone out there but even if there was, she refused to believe and pray to a god who let innocents die. And so the irony was just that, irony.

With those thoughts in her mind she got off the train in Sintra. There wasn’t much time to waste, to spend the night here would cost more than she could afford and so she had to move quickly. 

It took longer than she hoped it would to reach Pena Palace, the most colourful castle she had yet seen; one that was said to impress J.K. Rowling enough that she took it as one of the examples as she imagined Hogwarts. Octavia would have loved this, she knew. Bellamy would be far more intrested in the accomplishments of King Ferdinand the second, Finn and Raven would get into an arguement about which room they would have, she imagined. And with those conversations and images in her mind she sat on the stone road to the castle and started her sketch. She made only an outline, for it would take time to draw the complete joy in the face of Octavia’s cartoon counterpart and she knew she had to pay attention the the book Bellamy’s comic version should be holding; Finn’s hair needed to be messy enough - the details mattered far too much for this sketch to be finished in mere hours; this sketched mattered more than the others for a reason she couldn’t name but rather only to desribe as a feeling she felt they would get had they been here together; a feeling one wouldn’t get in large cities no matter how historic or impressive but could inhale in a remote town or in an abandoned house or in an empty forrest.

She decided to see the inside of the castle before starting drawing on the empty cups she had stored in her bag. She had a few that had simple drawings of Lisbon’s many historic features, none of them very impressive paintings but would earn her a few bucks at the worst. 

It took her a while to see the rooms of the palace for there were too many tourists and walking around with an interrail bag was as hard as it looked. The inside of the palace wasn’t nearly as grand as the outside, the Austrian king of Portugal didn’t seem to value decor all that  
much Clarke thought to herself. She sat on the terrace and ate a premade sandwich as she drew on the coffee cups. A simple sketch she made on the first one, a colourful sketch at the second; she knew she could do better but couldn’t find it in herself to draw on cups when she hadn’t finished the actual sketch. 

So Clarke went back to the stone road that looked at the castle from below and tried to imagine the look on Finn’s face as he would have smiled at a photograph that could have been taken on that spot. The 4 cups of Lisbon and 2 of Pena Palace she placed next to her with a small sign that said “for sale”. She kept sketching for two hours, a lot of people passed by; some looked at her cups, some looked at her, some paid her no attention. A cup of Lisbon she selled for 5 bucks to a woman with pale skin and one of Sintra she selled to a young girl with dark eyes for 10. The number of people passing by had dropped quiet a bit when she realised it was getting late. And so she went back to the main road without any idea where she wanted to go.

And thus Clarke did the only thing that came to her mind; she raised her thumb and waited for one of the cars that passed by to stop. She didn’t get on the truck which had been the first car to stop. Neither did she get on the Toyota of a young guy who said he was driving back to Lisbon. She didn’t get on the second truck that stopped either. Her bag had started to feel too heavy and going back to the train station to spend the night had become a serious option when a dark blonde slightly older than Clarke herself stopped. She got on that jeep not having heard of the Algavre they were heading to before. 

How long the road took, Clarke couldn’t tell. The woman didn’t talk much, but she quietly sang along to the Portuguese tunes. She didn’t ask Clarke anything personal. She didn’t tell her own name but when they reached a town that would clearly be full and lively in summer, she told Clarke she had a couch that was comfy and free.

And when hours after the sun had set and there were many hours for it to be born again, Clarke knocked on her door without a word. She spent the next day at the beach working on the same sketch as before. That night she came back to the woman’s house with a cheap bottle of Porto wine and spent the night again in her room. It went the same way for a week. She completed the sketch at last and drew one at the beach of their cartoon versions splashing water at each other under the shadow of the towering rocks. The same rocks and beach she drew on the cups, and on one she drew the woman with braids in her dark blonde hair sitting on her jeep. 

At the eight night Clarke spent in Algavre, she learned her name; Niylah. When the morning of that night started to creep up beyond the ocean, Clarke left the cup on the nightstand and signed her name in the bottom for the woman hadn’t asked her any questions and hadn’t waited for any answers. She waited only half an hour on the road with a paper that said “Porto” before a truck carrying wheat stopped. Clarke got in. The driver told Clarke stories in his native language and although Clarke couldn’t understand a word, she laughed when he did and said a few “ah” and “oh”s, and that seemed to be enough for the tanned skinned middle aged man.


	4. Chapter 4

She took of her sunglasses and put them on the small circular table. Her back was to the small cafè’s front, there wasn’t another chair on the opposite side of the table, instead the chairs were placed next to each other with identical circular tables placed in front of them. That was how most restaurants and cafès placed tables in Paris. Lexa thought it was stupid. 

The rain hadn’t stopped for the last hour, there wasn’t anyone else sitting outside. The people that were out in the street were all trying to go somewhere, mostly walking in quick steps under their umbrellas; a few running and splashing water around them in worn out jeans; some with their hoods up hurrying to a place that the brunette couldn’t name. She imagined some of them to be going to work, some trying to reach a class, a few rushing to meet a friend, a few going back home after a long night; Paris isn’t the city of love at 7 am, Paris isn’t Europe’s most popular tourist atraction at 7 am; this city, like every city is crowded and blurry, in a rush and on the move at 7 am. Lexa knew that know, whereever you are in the world people are always trying to catch up with life, rushing into it, running after it. It is never still enough in an ordinary day to have the time to appreciate the beauty. Beauty, like all else, becomes ordinary to people if it is placed at the center of their lives.

Why am I here, Lexa asked the herself for the thousand time. She got her degree in business. Her father was hoping she would soon take responsibility in the company. She was ready. So why had she convinced everyone in her life that receiving a law degree in Sorbonne was the best thing she could do for the company and herself? Why had they let her?

Everyone thought that why Lexa had become the person she is was because of Costia. They believed it had been her falling out with Anya that had pushed her into herself. They thought Gustus’s departure had been too much. But it wasn’t any of them, it never had been. People have the tendency to want reasons, Lexa knew. They couldn’t fathom how someone be different without a complete explanation. But there wasn’t any.

Lexa had spent years trying to fall in love with Costia. She loved her just fine and she cared a great deal about her, she was always kind to her, always the perfect partner but no matter how much she wanted to, she had never been in love with Costia. Costia, with her dark skin and warm eyes; her long legs and slender build, she had always been quick to love and quick to hate, she was quick to anger and easy to please, she was adventurous and childish, she thought little and acted fast and rash, she loved fiercely and passionately. Costia had been everything Lexa wasn’t and so everyone claimed they completed each other; and with the great care and kindnesa Lexa always acted with, no would say Lexa wasn’t in love. But she wasn’t, never had been yet Costia was and there comes a point where being loved isn’t enough; at least that was what she said. Well, what she said after Lexa caught in a rather compromising situation with Ontari. So people started to think that the brunette was heartbroken. 

Gustus had been a constant in Lexa’s life for years. Her parents had gotten divorced when she was still in diapers, their marriage had been an organized one. The daughter and son married, the companies merged. There was a slight issue though, Lexa’s father didn’t have the slightest interest in fairer gender. She, some how, had been born; her grandparents, pleased that the companies had been merged, business organised and an heir was even born, let her parents be. Gustus came into her fathers life a short while after the divorce, and with him came her niece, Lexa’s once best friend: Anya. It was only natural that Lexa felt almost betrayed as her father when one day a woman with a babe in her hands came to their door claiming to have been with Gustus for years. That was almost a year ago.

Her falling out with Anya was only expected after that. Lexa had many faults and she wouldn’t deny them but the one thing about her that wasn’t faulty were her morals. The brunette had always stood by what she thought was right, her beliefs didn’t waver; her sense of right and wrong ever firm, she was a loyal friend and a loyal lover but above all she had always remained loyal to herself. To forgive Gustus would be unfair to her Father, he would never tell her to give him up, he always advised her otherwise but Lexa wouldn’t do that, she couldn’t forgive what he did to her father. And as Lexa refused to forgive Gustus, Anya and her couldn’t be what they were; for what they were had been much like sisters and as their family fell apart so did their friendship.

But what made Lexa who she was hadn’t been any of that. Lexa, for all her efforts, had always lacked the passion and hope Costia had in abundance. She had never been energetic and talkative like Gustus. She wasn’t the lovable and delightful man her father was. She didn’t carry her mothers kind features and easy going attitude. Lexa had always talked a little less than everyone, much less when it came to talking about herself; she always laughed a little quiter; smiled a bit smaller; never losed her control; never had a drink more than she could handle. For all her show and pretend, Lexa had always been a little sadder than everyone else, a bit lonely even in a crowd, too in control even at love. After all that had come to be, she had just dropped the show and yet people didn’t know that; back home, they hoped the stably kind and easy going girl would come back after some time far and away. Little did they know, that the said girl had only been a show.

She took one last sip of her coffee and left a five euro banknote under the cup. She put on her leather jacket and took her sunglasses, her steps were slow and determined. She walked at the same pace she would walk if there were no rain, to the outer eye it seemed as if nothing could touch her. Not the rain, not the pain, not the world. She was soaking wer when she sat down at the third row minutes before the ethics class were to begin. Noone in the class would call her anything less than untouchable and charismatic, yet even though all the eyes passes by her with either envy or lust; all she felt was the same purposeless emptiness.


	5. Chapter 5

She had been in Porto for a few days. This city lacked the warmth the town before had in plenty, it lacked much the tourictic wonders Lisbon presented, it wasn’t like the states where cities were old but the houses were new and the skyscrapers were plenty. The one word she would use for Porto was old. Not historical old, but rather old in the sense of the houses probably smell and a number of people must have died inside that place. She imagined her friends would have felt the same and the time they spent here would be limited. She too wanted to leave but she had left home with only a few hundred euros and the small amount of money she made here had only helped with the nightly hostel stay. She knew she had to be careful and earn more if she didn’t want to open her phone to call her mother, to say she was broke.

It was with this thoughts that she walked across the Luis Bridge she had sketched the day before to the narrow streets of Gaia. She passed the more popular wine houses and made two left turns to find the distillary she explored on her first day here. The owner was a nice greying man who talked English with short sentences and mimics only, the only waiter wasn’t much better in the commonly spoken tonque but Clarke found herself enjoying their conversation. She also couldn’t complain when they gave her a treat of cheese servings to go with her 5 euro Tawny wine. And so she walked into the shop which only had two tables full. The owner was quick to spot her.

“Clarke, my friend! Come, come” said the man, dressed in a brown suit combined with a cream flower shirt and led her to the same table he had just came from.

“How are you doing Mr. Luca”

“Fine, fine. I have bis-ness proposiçao for you my friend”

The blonde only raised her eyebrows and said “Oh?”

“Easter iz thiz week. Escola will be on holiday! More people come. People ask me for tour of the factory. It iz 10 euros in Sandmann and Goodmann! Lower prize they ask. But my Inglês isn’t good for the tourists, they talk and talk and reclamar. You do the tour! You are pretty girl, more will come if you do tour!”

“Its just for the week then?”

“Yes, yes. I show you the place today, you learn. Ms. Maria teach you serve wine, you learn which wine good which bad. Come tomorrow, give tour. Give tour for a week. I give you 5 euros for every tour. For a garaffa of wine you sell on tour, i give you 1 euro”

Clarke was suprised. The only serving she had done had been to her friends or to her mothers occasional doctor guests, and she had never been brilliant at it; she was too clumsy, never managed to carry coffee without spilling it and always had problem balancing the tray. But she needed money.

“Can I stay here at the nights?” she asked

The man raised his eyebrows which desperately needed to be styled and then softly started to smile. “Yes, yes! Good for thieves and drunkards! Drunkards try to get in at night. For wine! You can stay. The is a sofá in back. Use it you can”

And so the tour started, Clarke learned a little about grapes and where they were raised; she listened to the distillary process and the waiting periods, she learned about bottling and positioning. The waitress showed her how to properly pour wine, how much to pour for a tasting and for an actual glass; she told her to   
approach people who held the glass improperly the first, she said they bought were easier to sell a bottle. It took a few hours but Clarke was ready for the day after. They shared two glasses of left over wine with a fairly large serving of pistachios with the waitress when the owner left. She said he wouldn’t realise and he probably wouldn’t mind, well not too much and Clarke wasn’t one to argue.

Clarke learned that Maria was 23, that she had an older brother who had studied tourism and worked at hotels in the summer but couldn’t find a job once the season ended. She learned that her mother was a great cook and she always made breakfast for her in the mornings. She found out the dark haired girl had a boyfriend who drove a cab and took night classes at the University of Porto. She learned that the black cloaked people she had seen around the city were students at the said university, that the cloaks were a part of the uniform. The waitress claimed proudly that it was where J.K. Rowling got the idea for Hogwarts clothing, that she had lived in Portugal and gotten many ideas from the country. Clarke already knew that, having had visited and sketched Livrarrio Lello which really did resemble the Hogwarts stairs, but she still listened with interest to the girls excited rambling in broken English. Clarke didn’t say much about herself, she always pointed the conversation back to the waitress whenever a question was pointed her way. Maria didn’t notice, Clarke was starting to find out that people barely did when they were taking about themselves.

She didn’t complain when the talkative girl presented her with a mozarella sandwich the girls mother had made for both of them in the morning. She started the tours with four boys barely out of college and didn’t complain when they were to focused on her cleavege to actually listen to the wine making process, afterall she really didn’t know much about what she was talking about. The next group of elderly couples were a harder bunch for they had asked questions but Clarke had gotten out of answering them when one of the ladies said she looked like her granddaughter. Said grand daughter had been six inches taller and ten pound heavier than Clarke with jet black hair but really the blonde couldn’t care less. 

And so the week passed as such. Clarke gave tours and selled wine during the day, chatted with Maria after they closed up and ate food the girl provided. The owner paid her at the end of each day and she had made 140 euros from the tours and 23 from the wine sales, having spent the nights at the distillary had saved her a lot as well. She drew on a cup for the owner and Maria each, both of them in cartoon versions standing in front of rows and stands of wine. She promised to visit if she ever came back to Porto and went to the outskirts of the city to start on another journey of hitchhiking, this time towards the southern cities of Spain.


End file.
